Professional Sales News

Two executives of British chemicals company Innospec, including the company’s Sales Director have been found guilty and convicted of conspiring to pay bribes to secure sales worth millions of pounds to Indonesia.

Dennis Kerrison, the former chief executive of Cheshire-based Innospec Ltd, and Militiades Papachristos, a former regional sales director at the firm, were convicted at Southwark Crown Court in London yesterday of plotting regular cash inducements to Indonesian officials between 2002 and 2008 to smooth sales of tetraethyl lead (TEL) for addition to petrol, according to The Independent .

A jury heard that during the time Kerrison and Papachristos were involved in overseeing the bribes, Innospec made sales of TEL to Indonesia worth about £168m – a significant proportion of which was secured corruptly.

Kerrison, 69, of Chertsey, Surrey, and Papachristos, 51, who lives in Thessaloniki, Greece, will be sentenced next month alongside Paul Jennings, 57, of Neston, Cheshire, and David Turner, 59, of Newmarket, Suffolk.

Jennings, another former chief executive at Innospec, and Turner, a former sales director who gave evidence against his two former colleagues, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit corruption in 2012.